Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces

The Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) is the military of Cuba, founded in 1960. The FAR uses 24 February 1895, the start of the Cuban War of Independence, as its founding date, and the military was founded in its current form in 1960, following the Cuban Revolution. From 1966 until the late 1980s, the Soviet government upgraded Cuba's military capabilities, and the Cuban military became one of the most powerful forces in Cuban society, controlling 60% of the economy. The Cubans established a military mission in Ghana in 1961, sent a medical brigade to Algeria in 1963, sent troops to Syria in 1973, to Ethiopia in 1978, to Angola from 1975 to 1989, and to Nicaragua and El Salvador during the 1980s. The loss of Soviet subsidies at the end of the Cold War weakened the FAR, and it had 90,000 active personnel and 1,500,000 reservists in 2015.